The jungle levels are completed! Right now I’m just working on adding the background and other details. After this I have to finish the Grassland world levels, start the Arctic world and possibly cut the Volcano world? Then there’s a bunch of playtesting on the Grassland and Jungle worlds to nail down the difficulty.

Since the last post I’ve fixed a lot of the bugs that came with going completely underwater, and now the first 3 levels of the Resort World are complete! I’ve got 3 more levels to go, then the boss, and then on to testing to make sure the difficulty isn’t too high. Also, the graphics will need some more oomph, so once all the levels are pretty much set in stone I’ll go back and add the finishing touches.

Today I take a look at Chillingo’s latest game, Storm in a Teacup for the iPhone, which goes for 99 cents on the App Store.

Storm in a Teacup is a physics-based platformer (what a surprise from the creators of Angry Birds) with polished graphics and sound design. In terms of art direction, the game tries its hardest to feel stylistically whole, but the style feels a bit off, like the game was thrown together in Photoshop. Plus, there’s annoying stickers everywhere, presumably desperate attempts at subliminally teasing the player into collecting more trinkets. In addition, if you take a look at the player’s character you’ll see it isn’t very consistent with the rest of the game. Here’s the low-down:

What to Like:

Physics puzzles

Smooth gameplay

Cuteness

Simplicity

Perfect for perfectionists

99 CENTS MAN!!

What to Dislike:

Simple physics puzzles

Relies on pixel-perfect jumps a little too much

Cuteness

Conflicting art style

No story

While it was fun while it lasted, physics platformers are getting a little stale as of late. Chillingo seems to be experimenting here, just releasing small games with undeveloped (almost alpha-level) art styles in a search for the next Angry Birds.

The Rotting Cartridge gives Storm in a Teacup a THREE…. out of five.

So we’re developing a game, tentatively called “Kale in Dinoland”. (In case you noticed, yes, it is a port of the original game ^^) The game is being developed for the iPhone, and is developed to look and play like its old GameBoy counterpart. Today I worked on redrawing a tileset for Resort (water) levels in the game, and added swimming effects (but no swimming animations yet).

Tonight I’m going to work on another world tileset (there are 6 worlds in all). Here is a comprehensive list of all the things we need to do before completion:

Create swimming sprites for the player

Add the water channel vents that push/pull the player underwater

Implement the two fish enemies and their motions (urchins are already done)

Finish the rest of the enemies

Finish the rest of the tilesets and their environmental variables

Test how the enemies and environment all function together; make adjustments (check moving platforms!!)

With all the tools in place, develop/refine levels (the fun part)

Refine world screen, saving, menus, and other UI presentation-based stuff